Tunnels and Lies
by Blue-Inked Frost
Summary: Lost, destroyed, soulless. The Bhaalspawn is trapped in a nightmare of revenge by the dragon Firkraag and a monster from her past that she believed to be dead. Alone and loveless, she nears the end of a maze of death and despair.


_Note_: Keyria belongs to annabelle_marie and is her Bhaalspawn, who is romancing Kivan. I hope you enjoy this story, Annabelle!

And if anyone reading this is interested, signups for the Baldur's Gate Gift Exchange close very soon! Offer to create a gift for another Baldur's Gate fan and receive a gift in turn. You'll find it on a search for Archiveofourown Baldursgategiftexchange2019.

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The Bhaalspawn was filthy, bloodied, trapped, alone, and soulless. She had nowhere to go but further down into the cramped tunnels, even as her heart beat with anguish and anger.

The closing tunnel walls were clever. They were carved in such a way she couldn't go backward. They were a perfect fit for Keyria, as if this hole was dug especially to be her grave. Terrified, she wondered how long the dragon Firkraag had plotted his revenge against his old enemy Gorion.

Keyria wanted to help her friends - needed to help her friends - but they were all riven by the dragon's frightening plot.

To help the friendly Lord Jierdan with his orc problem had seemed like a good idea, to raise much-needed resources and allies and support. They were tricked to go deep into his lair before they knew anything at all - and then Keyria had seen the visions, terrifying visions. She supposed all her friends had.

Her adopted father figure Gorion, dead once again at Sarevok's hands. The skin-masked face of Irenicus in Spellhold asylum, wielding a scalpel to caress her face with its cold iron. Khalid's pale corpse, waking, rising, pointing an accusing finger that _It was you who killed me, monster._ Keyria had broken, screamed, fled.

A rakshasa had followed her. She'd smelt the tiger in the dark and felt the tiger-fur, and then knew the visions were lies, illusions. She had struck with her small dagger, cutting something in the dark, felt claws tear open her wings. She fled.

Soulless, hopeless, loveless. The black walls whispered to her. They trapped her by her own wings - it was the dirty white mass dragging behind Keyria that forced her to go nowhere but forward. Keyria was an avariel, a winged elf. Most avariel were deeply claustrophobic. Living with humans had given Keyria less of it than other avariel, but she was still desperate. Usually she loved her wide white wings, but she'd almost rather imagine them cut off now so she could live.

Weeping, she forced herself on through the stinking tunnel. Was it narrowing? She thought it was narrowing. Firkraag had probably made it so, to tighten on her until she had no way further or back. She thought she could hear the rakshasa behind her. Perhaps soon she would smell its foul tiger-breath, feel its claws stab her in the back.

She only hoped her death would be quick.

Keyria was forced to shed her armour, her wristguards. Anything to struggle through. Her bare skin scraped against the stone walls. She was forced to crawl like an ant. The dirty tangles of her hair fell in her mouth and she couldn't spit it out. Her knees pained her like a burn.

This was worse than the Undercity labyrinth, where she'd been forced to lead her companions to find Sarevok. There, Keyria had been confident, all too confident, ready to seal the victories she'd already seized from her half-brother. And even more importantly, there she'd had friends about her ... and her true love.

Keyria was broken in the dark, tears dripping from her face. For so long she'd forced herself never to think about the man she loved. She'd bid him farewell not long after Sarevok's defeat, on a brisk spring day between the River Chionthar and the Cloakwood. All they felt for each other lay unspoken between them, their breath choked with a myriad of words still-born in their lungs. Kivan. The hunter driven to avenge his wife's cruel death.

Keyria was weak enough to think of him now, crawling hunted and lost through black mud to her death.

She had always noticed the sadness in Kivan's eyes. No matter his revenge, he was always gentle to Keyria and Imoen. They were children lost in a bandit's woods when he came upon them. He'd become guide, protector, the one Keyria came to trust and rely upon above all others.

_What would he think of her now, what would he do if he ever saw her?_

She was a daughter of murder. After Irenicus' torture, Keyria knew more of that bloody legacy in her bones and blood. She'd lost her very soul, becoming a crippled, broken thing.

_Face me! Face me and fight! Let us see who will become the new God of Murder, sister!_ Keyria remembered how Sarevok's mad laughter echoed in her ears in such a darkness as this, his yellow eyes glowing below his helm with a sick unnaturalness that somehow she _recognised_.

_Keyria desperately loosed her arrows against Sarevok's cadre. There was Angelo Dosan, the corrupt Flaming Fist, there a mage whose name she didn't know - and on the dais of Bhaal's temple, a familiar hulking shape of a monstrous ogre. Tazok. The creature Kivan had hunted for many years. The bandit king of Peldvale. He'd escaped when Kivan and Keyria fired his camp. He would not escape a second time._

_Keyria aimed, but couldn't get a clear shot. Kivan's slim figure danced with his longsword, which seemed as frail as a rapier against Tazok's brutal broadsword. Amidst fire and smoke, she couldn't bear to fire without harming Kivan. She chose Angelo as her target. Her arrows shattered his mirrored images one by one while Jaheira and Imoen closed in on him._

_Minsc, strong Minsc, pursued Sarevok. Yet even the strength of that bear of a man couldn't hold the line against the man who would be a god. Sarevok battered Minsc aside like a bear would brush a fly away, and strode on toward his goal. Keyria._

_Khalid strove to stand in front of Keyria to protect her. Then Sarevok's blade knocked him out of the way. Jaheira screamed, but had no choice but to fight on. There was nothing between brother and sister._

_Keyria loosed a last arrow that only fell away from Sarevok's mighty armour. She drew her twin swords. The temple ceiling was too low to launch herself in the air, but she struck at Sarevok with the combined force of her wings and arms._

_Sarevok's Sword of Chaos met her blow for blow. Keyria tried to fly - she would have flown away from Sarevok if she only could - but he struck at her wings. Her tendons were sliced open in unimaginable pain. Blood poured from her wings and turned them to scarlet red. Keyria wasn't strong enough. Her half-brother was on her, so close that she could smell his breath. Sarevok would kill her._

_Then her brother gave a choked cry. He spun around. There was a dagger thrust into the back of his neck. Keyria, in her frightened jumble, caught sight of Kivan, clinging to Sarevok's back, his dagger thrust between gorget and pauldron. Sarevok moved to shake him off. Kivan dropped down of his own accord. Keyria saw the line of blood run down Sarevok's armour. He was wounded, slow for a moment. She and Kivan moved in together. Both their blades found their way past the armour and into Sarevok's body._

_Then the last spell screamed by Angelo Dosan came off, and the temple of Bhaal was a fiery inferno._

_Kivan called Tazok's name. He started forward, running below a falling beam alight with fire. Keyria caught the back of his cowl. She dragged him out, forced him out. The inferno was a blur - Imoen shouting, pulling Minsc by the arm, Jaheira carrying Khalid in her bear's shape. Keyria watched the temple of Bhaal collapse over itself and destroy everything within by fire. All was white ash. Sarevok was gone. Angelo was gone. Tazok was gone._

_Or so they believed._

After it all, Keyria knew three things.

One, that Kivan had sacrificed his own revenge to save Keyria's life.

Two, that Kivan would never know Tazok's fate.

Three, that knowledge would always and inevitably drive them apart.

Keyria was sobbing now, alone and pinched, with no one to hear or to help her. She crawled through the black tunnels. Her nails splintered against the stone and the black filth that covered it all, her fingers bleeding like her knees. There was nothing before or behind her. Only Firkraag's trap, ever narrowing. She could no longer even crawl. She was forced to lie prone, creeping on her elbows and knees like she was nothing more than a worm. Her mouth was all but forced to taste the dirt on the ground. Her wings were numb and flightless. She would break and die here in this lightless cramped place, miles underground from air and freedom.

Then she tumbled forward. The ground below her suddenly disappeared. Her fingernails clawed at the edge as she fell down and down. The expanse of air itself was a tiny relief. Her bruised and bleeding wings extended, but could not carry her aloft in so cramped a space.

The air was still and smelt like death.

And she was not alone.

A dark chuckle greeted her in that place. Low-pitched beyond any human, cracked and scratched, it bounced off the walls with a terrifying echo. "Welcome to the end, child of Bhaal."

Keyria lifted her wings. Then pain pierced her through. She screamed. A crossbow bolt sizzled into her.

"Stay on the ground, Keyria," the voice commanded her. "I'll come down for you. In a moment."

Another bolt pierced her other wing. Keyria screamed again. Her eyes searched for the person who had done this cruelty to her. _Undead_, was her first thought. She saw the hulking figure on a dais of rock, outlined in greys to her elven infravision. He was twisted enough to not be anything living. A large part of his face had been burnt away. Deep, knotted scars pulled at his entire form. He looked as if he ought not to be alive ...

He ought not to be alive at all. But he was.

He cocked his crossbow again. It looked large enough to be a siege weapon, and probably was. Keyria dropped to the ground, the pain too much for her to bear. This enemy could have killed her immediately. He chose to maim her first.

His jaw was barely held together by black rotting strands of flesh. One of his eyes was missing, one of his ears. Fire had charred his skin as if it were made of stone flakes. He wore no armour as if he wanted to show the damage done to him. Flashes of white bone showed through his flesh when he moved. Yet move he did, and strung his crossbow with a strength that twenty human men would be hard pressed to match.

He was an ogre, damaged beyond understanding, and burning with the bloodlust of revenge.

"Tazok," Keyria accused. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. He should not be alive. He should never have been alive to begin with. She and Kivan had burnt his camp, had near killed him. They should have killed him long ago.

"You recognise my pretty face," Tazok said. His very voice was ashes and dust, warped by the grave of his burning. "I was wondering whether you would know me."

"You - serve a dragon now," Keyria said, half speaking and half screaming through her pain. "It must be a come-down from the son of a god ... "

The next bolt through her wings showed her no mercy. She shrieked.

"The dragon wanted vengeance on your foster father, and I wanted vengeance on you," Tazok said. "It is a partnership. If he betrays and eats me, I will die happy. You would be surprised with all I had to offer him. I know you, Keyria."

Keyria felt the ogre leap down from his position. Heavily, he hit the ground. He walked to her, slow step by slow step, knowing she was pinned down. Tazok wrapped Keyria's hair about his fist and lifted her hair. She was close, too close to him.

She smelt Tazok. It was a foul odour of charred flesh and ordure and decay. He smelt like a dead man.

Keyria spat at him. Tazok didn't respond to the wad of saliva.

"Your brother paid anyone and everyone coin for any word of you. Where you ate, where you drank, where you pissed. Your armour, your clothing, your breechclouts. He knew who your friends were. He knew what each of them - and you - could do. He even knew the dates of your monthlies. I knew everything about you. You'd be surprised what Firkraag was willing to pay for that, but I wanted only one thing. This."

He threw Keyria into the stone wall at her back. She hit it with a shattering pain. Her broken wings bent below her.

This man brutalised Deheriana before her death. He tortured and enslaved and slaughtered countless captives in Sarevok's name. He pressed men into the mines below Cloakwood. He tried to slay everyone Keyria held dear.

"You ... don't know everything about me," Keyria said.

_No mercy_, Keyria thought. _No mercy for you._ She reached down into that soulless state that Irenicus had awakened within her, the state she had not even known about until long after Baldur's Gate. It was the evil of the Lord of Murder within her.

And the Slayer went screaming and striking at Tazok.

The Slayer's wings remoulded themselves, painfully healing their wounds, but Keyria had no thought of flight now. Only killing her enemy. Her powerful claws slashed open Tazok's face.

In the empty black shards of her shattered soul, something laughed.

Tazok closed the gap between them and bit savagely at the Slayer's face. His teeth ripped off a chunk of skin and flesh. The Slayer struck back, trapped in a frenzied bloodlust. Their size and weight were almost identical. They were locked together, melded like dance partners.

Tazok bit off the lid of a potion bottle and drank deep. He punched the Slayer. It felt like being hit with an anvil. The Slayer's bones broke at each blow. Tazok must have paid richly for such magic. He was unstoppable. No matter what strips the Slayer tore from him, he beat her down. Tazok tore at the Slayer's wings with teeth and claws, and still more bones shattered with each strike.

"I knew," Tazok shouted in triumph. "I knew what you are." He ripped a gaping wound in Keyria's breast. Blood gushed over the Slayer's scales. "Do you feel your murder? Do you feel the god of death come for you?"

_No mercy. Never mercy._ A cold death cackled inside Keyria. Her hand suddenly grew spikes, spikes that impaled Tazok's body. _Let him die._ She and Tazok were close as lovers. She'd never let him go until death.

Then she felt cold steel through her own body. Tazok had drawn a sword. She too was impaled. Where it struck, frost spread and grew. The Slayer's healing sought to close around the blade, but there was only ice there. She knew that sword as the black weapon _Varscona_, the sword of hate. The soul-eater. The blade pinned her through the stomach to the ground.

"Your goddess is Aerdrie Faenya!" Tazok gloated. The Slayer screamed at the name of the goddess of the avariel, the goddess who loathed Bhaal and all his works. "Die as a monster, and your very soul will never pass to her realm. This much I learnt from Sarevok."

_Lost, destroyed, soulless. Lost, destroyed, soulless._ Black spots danced before Keyria's eyes. Sarevok was golden dust. Sarevok was nothing. Soon she would be too.

_And did I want and crave this death, knowing that I had nothing left?_

Despair and surrender melded within her. Tazok had his revenge.

"Deheriana!"

_A memory of an elven woman's corpse, horrifyingly desecrated and defiled. Scarcely more than bones. They dug a grave in Peldvale and buried her beneath a wild cherry tree, her favourite fruit in life._

"Deheriana - not again!"

_A hoarse voice speaking elvish, his throat long damaged by captivity and torture. His words were sparing but wise. Here, the words were frenzied and afraid._

"Keyria!"

The Slayer's eyes fluttered open. A length of black had bloomed in Tazok's chest, like the stem of a rose. Then another stem took a place next to it. Thorny barbs stood out from it, decorated with droplets of dew. Tazok's chest was peppered with stems with no flowers. How strange.

_Arrows_, Keyria thought. _They are arrows._ Tazok dropped to his knees. The ogre tried to speak one last time, but there was an arrow in his windpipe. He opened his mouth, but said nothing more. He fell over the Slayer's body, blood mingling with blood.

Keyria felt a touch on the back of her head, gentle this time. She heard a cork slipped from a bottle. A cool liquid dribbled into her mouth. She could barely swallow it, but her tongue moved almost in spite of her.

"I was too late for my love. I thought I would be too late a second time. Hold on. Do not die. I left you. _Keyria_," Kivan repeated.

He knew her name. He looked down at her face, and held her as delicately as if he touched the stamen of a lily and scattered no pollen.

Keyria was somehow herself again. It was as if to see him was enough to restore her elven shape. The Slayer was gone, but she was gravely wounded.

And yet the sweet potion between her lips tingled inside her. Her heart continued to beat. She still could not speak. All that was in her drew to that single purpose: another beat, another breath, to carry on.

"I swore to track him to the end of the world. I left you behind. It was you he traced; you he sought. I was too late. I was wrong," Kivan said. "_Do not die, do not die_," he repeated in broken elvish.

He had come back for her. After all this time, the man she had thought never to see again was by her side. Keyria no longer believed she had lost everything. She had a reason to live, to breathe on.

Keyria reached up with a bloodied hand that felt like lead. She placed it on Kivan's cheek. She could do nothing else, but hoped her gesture made everything clear. Kivan bent close to her. His gentle touch staunched her wounds. Here, in this terrible dark place, pursued by a dragon bent on revenge, pain in every inch of her body, close to fainting, Keyria felt suddenly that there was no place she would rather be.

"Melmenya," Kivan said. _My love. I love you._ Keyria took a breath as if to return his words, but she couldn't speak. Only gaze at him. She was unafraid of anything, as long as he was by her side. Her hand dropped from his face of its own accord. She was fragile and trembling below his touch. She knew her spirit wavered between death and the life she now wanted to keep as unbearably precious. Keyria let the friendly darkness absorb her.

_Please, my love_, she thought, _be there when I wake._


End file.
